Brutal machine gun takedowns were never a part of the classic Tomb Raider formula.

You see, for a game called Tomb Raider, very few tombs actually get raided. Those that do are almost entirely short, optional puzzle sections that achieve very little beyond revealing more useful items on your map. It was always a let-down when I would solve another physics-based puzzle and uncover a stash of ancient Japanese gold, only to have the sole in-game benefit be instructions on how to find more useful items.

Still, I have started on a negative point, and that is unfair. Tomb Raider 2013 is a solid game, very entertaining and offering a lot to love. It is well-written, with the primary scribe being the always reliable Rhianna Pratchett, and features strong characters and excellent voice acting. The compelling story and character relationships help to motivate the player through the game's action, which consists of a lot of exploration and a hell of a lot of fighting.

My goodness there is a lot of fighting in this game. A far cry from Lara's traditionally nimble dodging and jumping, this new Lara's fighting style comes very much from the schools of Nathan Drake and Marcus Fenix. The frequent gunfights typically involve advancing from cover to cover, picking off enemies as you go. Upgrading some brawling skills will allow you to polish off small numbers of enemies with a climbing pick to the face, but during a pitched battle engaging in melee combat is mostly just an effective way to get Lara turned into Swiss cheese.

Lara is engaging in all of this shooting and stabbing because she and her friends have been shipwrecked on the shores of an uncharted island full of homicidal cultist-pirates. (Why can't uncharted islands in games ever be populated by anyone nice?) This archaeology expedition gone wrong quickly devolves into a desperate struggle for survival as Lara and her friends are caught up in the demented machinations of the cult leader who is determined to use human sacrifice to resurrect an ancient witch queen.

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If this were a brand new property with no historical context, I would have very few issues with it and would happily give it a strong recommendation. The cover-based combat is much like that found in other modern shooters, but it's competently designed and features a range of weapons that feel good to use, plus the splashes of gory hand-to-hand combat spice things up nicely.

The exploration is near flawless, with Lara climbing, swinging, jumping, and sliding with a wonderfully balanced mix of fluidity and realism. One of the best new elements is the dynamic use of the climbing pick. Certain rocky surfaces have no handholds, but they are rough enough for Lara to jam her pick into. This is not done automatically, however - the player needs to tap a button at the right time for her to jam her pick into the rock face and stop herself from falling. It gives the climbing a great sense of involvement.

That is probably my favourite part of the whole game, in fact: player engagement. I can't easily define why, but Tomb Raider is the first game in many years that made me feel like the main character was not an extension of myself, a virtual avatar under my complete control, but more of a companion who is exploring the game world with me. I got a real sense that Lara and I were partners, overcoming the game's trials together. It was an unusual but welcome feeling.

Despite all of these positives, though, the problem is that Tomb Raider is not a fresh new intellectual property. This is a reboot of an established franchise which, although it had many problems, also featured a lot of excellent design and had an established mood and aesthetic. While I understand that a prequel-reboot like this is going to re-imagine a lot of the franchise's classic systems, I feel like they threw away too much.

I really like some of the changes. Going back to Lara when she was young and uncertain makes her a far more compelling heroine than the totally unflappable Lara of old. I'm also a fan of the semi-open world, built from fairly spacious chunks of island linked together by tunnels and gateways, and traversable quickly by fast-travelling from base camp to base camp. The new XP and gear systems are great too, and allow players to customise Lara's skills and equipment to suit their playing style.

My main problem was the sad lack of environmental puzzles. As I said at the beginning of this review, the game's few tombs are all optional, and while there is a lot of climbing and exploration it mostly takes place outdoors in natural environments. The optional tombs all consist of a single puzzle, usually a physics-based one involving weighing something down or getting the explosive barrel to the barrier. Big, complex tombs full of ancient traps are completely absent.

The game's level of violence is also worth talking about. Clearly the designers made a choice to go for a darker, nastier version of Tomb Raider, and the result is pretty unpleasant. Both Lara's kills - shooting villains in the face with a shotgun or jamming her pick into their skulls - and her deaths - the shocking metal-pole-through-the-head is a notorious example - are shockingly gruesome. That said, I never felt like the violence was exploitative or gratuitous. On the contrary, I thought it did a great job building up the mood of tension and danger, but the larger question of whether a Tomb Raider game should have been so vicious in the first place is worth asking.

Finally, I got slightly fed up with the sheer number of gunfights. Lara gets into battle after battle after battle, and the bulk of the game is spent with her crouched behind cover, waiting for her enemies to reload so she can pop out and sneak a quick headshot. The ratio of exploration and puzzle solving to gunfights feels far too low, and more than once the combat music would kick in and I would shout aloud, "Oh, seriously? Another fight?"

I am aware that the Tomb Raider series needed an extensive overhaul. The games just weren't shifting units anymore, so the classic formula definitely needed a major shake-up. I'm just not sure that this was the right direction.

Tomb Raider is a fantastic game on its own terms. Players who have no history with the franchise or never enjoyed it previously are going to have a great time, especially fans of third-person shooters who are looking for something a bit different.

Long-time fans of the series are going to need to be more cautious, though. This is not the Tomb Raider you have loved for almost two decades, but an entirely new breed of game that draws heavily on game genres that are popular right now. There's still a trace of the old DNA in there, but it has been spliced with Uncharted, Gears of War, and even a little Call of Duty.

Overall, I'd say this is a promising reboot, but I hope the revived series will return a little more to its roots in coming sequels. Let's see a few more tombs in future, eh?